The usually thorough, probing Frontline is being broadcast tonight, with a promise to examine some of the most pressing foreign policy challenges facing the next president.

Unfortunately, “The War Briefing,”airing at 9 p.m. eastern time on PBS, addresses only one of them, and not particularly well.

That doesn’t mean that Frontline, as usual, isn’t worth watching, when it is pretty much all we get in terms of serious mass media efforts to understand the conflicts in which we’re engaged. Also as usual, it needs to be watched with a grain of skepticism, and you need to come armed with a little backup knowledge of your own. Too bad most viewers won’t have that.

Let’s dispense with what’s good about “The War Briefing” first.

As Frontline notes, Afghanistan is the “forgotten war,” or was until bashing Iraq fell out of vogue. While images of GIs on patrol, going house to house, and being blown up in monochromatic, trash-strewn, sewage-plagued, date-palmed Iraq are common and have been burned into our consciousness. The same isn’t true of Afghanistan.

Frontline’s embed with Bravo Company — I didn’t catch a more specific unit identification but the shoulder patches indicate 1st ID — in the Korengal Valley is an excellent snapshot of the realities American soldiers face, trying to control Taliban movements in rough country, with an unhelpful populace, near the Pakistani border. There are some moments of light combat — GIs pinned down by Taliban fire, GIs moving fast across exposed ridges and GIs getting hit. The cameraman does a good job of capturing the war on the ground, from sweeping vistas with distant airstrikes, to long patrols strung out across the fore-to-mid ground on mountain trails, to bringing the camera to a tight focus on the intensity of young GIs under fire, hugging the rocks. Likewise, some good angles on frustrations on the ground, in the villages are shown.

The program does yeoman’s work presenting the conventional wisdom on the problems we face in Afghanistan and Pakistan: difficult terrain, lack of government control, and an often hostile, alienated population.

OK, we have now dispensed with the good parts.

We are informed at the outset that it is Iraq’s fault. All the U.S. troops are there and attention was diverted from Afghanistan at a critical moment. Without getting into the Iraq debate, suffice it to say that this is a multi-front war, and whatever a particular presidential candidate might have been telling you, our ability to pick and choose our battlefields is influenced by more than either our whims and earnest desires, or our need to make political points.

Frontline, though it presumes to give the next president a war briefing, curiously does not consider our ongoing interests and obligations in Iraq worthy of further discussion, though one candidate has indicated he wants to pull out precipitiously, and the other, notoriously, wants to stay there “100 years.”

The only thing approaching proposals for a solution in Afghanistan that Frontline cites is more troops, as well as stating the need for a political solution. But this is done only superficially. There is also lip service paid to the need for an effective counterinsurgency. The failure to address burning questions is all the more unfortunate, as “The War Briefing” includes what are either very poor interviews or very selectively edited interviews with a couple of counterinsurgency stars, David Kilcullen and John Nagl.* But the subject is discussed only in the context of its difficulties and a general failure to execute one thus far. (I’d refer readers who are interested in counterinsurgency to Small Wars Journal, where these and other professionals discuss and debate these issues.)

What is astonishing is that I watched the entire hour-long program and did not hear the name “General David Petraeus” once in the review copy, though their identifying tags note that Kilcullen and Nagl advised him in Iraq’s turn-around. Petraeus, the United States Army’s foremost counterinsurgency advocate and its superlatively effective practitioner at division and theater level, has just taken over command of Centcom and now oversees both the Iraq and Afghan wars.

Whatever plans the United States might actually have for driving a wedge between the Taliban and the population, and what options might actually be placed in front of the next president, are not discussed. The existence of a counterinsurgency doctrine in the United States military, its goals of pushing troops out of bases and into villages, and its success in quelling violence in Iraq, is mentioned only as a lead-in to bemoaning the lack of boots on the ground in Afghanistan. I would hate to think the failure to discuss success in Iraq or our ongoing commitment there, only its role as a theoretical distraction, isn’t a subtle boost for a particular candidate a week ahead of the election. More likely, it simply reflects the fact that large parts of the American media have bought Barack Obama’s narrow and dangerously flawed view of the wars in which we are engaged.

The absence of Petraeus from this program is significant not least for the role he has played in freeing up troops in Iraq that Frontline notes are not currently available for Afghanistan, though thanks to Petraeus, maybe they will be. Sadly, a favorable mention of the training up of Iraqi troops, compared to the current state of Afghan forces, was deleted from the latest script. The inadequate use of counterinsurgency experts and the heavy reliance on diplomats, policy wonks and journalists, coupled with the interviewer’s interest in describing problems rather than discussing solutions, leaves viewers with a bleak sense of hopelessness, not unlike what was promoted at an earlier stage of the Afghan war, when we were informed American troops would be trapped and slaughtered by the indomitable Afghan just as the British and Russians were.

Which brings us to another point. Frontline informs us that “Afghanistan is now a deadlier battlefield than Iraq.” It fails to inform us that for NATO troops, the war in Afghanistan remains many orders of magnitude below the KIA rate of iraq — which has been itself among the lowest of our nation’s shooting wars. It also fails to note that despite the best efforts of the Taliban in ambushing NATO and Afghan Army forces, and blowing up civilians with suicide bombs, Taliban fighters reportedly make up the overwhelming majority of deaths. Thousands of them, including key leaders, have been killed. When they engage with coalition forces, they die at rates of 10, 20, 50, and 100 to one. A highly selective media focus on numbers has been a chronic problem in coverage of these wars, a sin of both omission and commission.

Much of the program is also devoted to Pakistan which, Frontline notes, is a huge and tricky problem. The Taliban enjoy logistical support for the Afghan war, and a Pakistani Taliban is emerging that has turned the war in the other direction.

Frontline actually gets somewhat more alarmist here than I think is necessary, sugesting nuclear armed Pakistan is on the verge of collapse and an Islamist takeover. But the point that the United States has to walk carefully is well taken. Premature announcement of invasion plans, one might advise the next president, should be avoided.

The script, at the time I received my review copy last week, was still a work in progress, with editing underway. Let’s hope that by tonight, recent face-to-face talks between Taliban representatives and representatives of President Hamid Karzai’s government will have merited a mention, as well as recent protests by thousands of common Afghans in eastern Afghanistan — Pashtun and Taliban country — who are outraged by the purposeful slaughter of young men by the Taliban. It does note that in Pakistan the slaughter of tribal leaders, though it fails to note that elsewhere, indiscriminate and ill-advised jihadi bloodlust has proven to be a stumbling block for extremist Islam. Opium production that finances the Taliban is up, according to some recent reports. Not mentioned here is the fact that opium production is encountering difficulties. I know it doesn’t fit the doom-and-gloom template, but much like the glimmerings we saw in late 2006 through mid-2007, these points suggest the Afghan people may have had it and may want an out.

In the end, what Frontline tells us is only that Afghanistan is a big problem. More than anything, “The War Briefing” is like the views of Iraq we saw in early to mid-2007: Doom, gloom and despair, with little reference to the evidence that there is a path forward and some people are on it. Afghanistan is not Iraq. There solutions there will be different. But there are many lessons we can take from there, among them the uselessness of despair. Thanks to professionals who looked seriously at one another and at the seemingly hopeless problems in Iraq, and who learned from their mistakes using available resources and opportunities, despair itself is in a state of collapse. Iraq is moving beyond hope to the realization of stability and security, maybe even something like peace.

But for some reason, though, Frontline dances around these encouraging events in its coverage of Afghanistan. And through the fog of despair it can’t quite find the word it seems to be looking for:

Note: Frontline advertised ‘The War Briefing’ at my blog, www.julescrittenden.com. I have endeavored not to let the modest advertising fee influence my review.

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22 Comments, 22 Threads

1.
Marc Malone

The funny thing is, the plan is already in place, and will work… unless Obama and Congress wimp out. Obama won’t, because he needs to establish his military bona fides. But, Congress may, a la Barney Frank. (Of course, military recruitment will go way down under the Dems, and it would be impossible to prosecute the war in that case.)

If they follow through, Obama will have his victory… put into place by Bush II. Just like Clinton got the credit for the economic boom put into place by Bush I and the ’94 Pub Congress.

If McCain wins, the victory is in the bag, Dem Congress or no. After all the Dem talk about Afghanistan being “the Central front”, they can’t back out just because McCain won. They might try, but McCain has too much credibility on this issue.

The “distracted by Iraq” argument is idiotic. Afghanistan is a totally different place. We will never win there the way we are winning in Iraq – the location, geography, people and traditions are all against us.

Unless things in Pakistan change drastically for the better or the Afghans themselves get a lot more motivated, the situation on the ground is as good as it will get right now. We should call it a victory and accept the fact that will have light-infantry and SF units there for the foreseeable future to pound the Taliban whenever they stick their heads up.

no cities to hide in, the taliban is caught in the open. maybe through attrition those lessons in Iraq are not being shifted to Afhganistan, except for ied’s. all taliban casualties are civilians, makes for better press. the dems will lose the war and somehow blame GWB. after all it was 8 years of failed blah blah blahs which they won’t manage to get out from under. the taliban is good at what they do,they just aren’t good at we do. now that the focus is the stan, maybe we can get her done.

Heh I find any debate or even talking about Afghanistan without a huge amount of NATO, UN, Euro-trash bashing is pointless. Afghanistan the “forgotten war”(at least by the media) hasn’t been forgotten by any other country that hates the US. In fact I would argue its being watched and has been watched much more closely. Afghanistan can be blamed for the problems happening in Georgia along with a lot of other problems Russia has been causing recently. The UN, NATO and the spineless cowards that form much of the EU has shown russia that they are just that spineless, weak, cowards who will doing nothing unless the US forces them to… and even then they will only send token forces which they will demand not be put in harms way. They will then refuse to honor commitments made and fail to supply their own troops.

Russia, china and a whole host of other countries have seen NATO’s weakness and most of all the Euro-trash weakness. Putin is playing his cards well pushing just enough to test and gain but not enough for the Euros to feel the need to “worry” that they will have to fight and die for their freedom…

History will look back and wonder how the media could be so blind and how russia watched and learned and pushed us to the brink of war again.

If the program does not cover how mountain warfare is different from flat land warfare, turn it off. You can throw much of all the wonderful ideas of sea level to low elevation warfare away at high elevations. If the NATO allies had bothered to get their alpen/mountain troops to Afghanistan, we would be much better off. When half of 10MD was given a hot province in Iraq, it calmed down quickly – morale and capability of mountain troops is superior to that of flatland troops. The Canadians demonstrated their waning capability by still fielding the best mountain troops to Afghanistan and the proceeded to stage a winter offensive that mapped out the al Qaeda and Talibani training camps on the border, plus do some odd fighting now and again. That was considered even by the locals as ‘impossible to do’. Not MSM impossible, but people who live up in arid, thin atmosphere areas during the winter.

This is not a numbers game, but a professionalism venue: field solid, mountain and alpine troops and you will succeed. Whenever you see ‘a few brave men’ holding off thousands, you can bet it is usually in the mountains somewhere, where a few, brave men can bottle up regular land armies. I’m getting to think we should ask the Iraqis to lend us one of their two mountain divisions in Afghanistan… bless the Canadians, Brits, Aussies and those willing to stand up and *fight* the right way. The rest of NATO? Put up, or shut up. Fight better, smarter and harder than the natives and their foreign hangers-on and you can and will win. The only ‘diversion’ on mountain troops is not funding them properly… which the US paid for by not doing so in the 1990′s and not having them when Afghanistan opened.

And for that I blame both parties. Especially the people bitching now about the ‘savings’ had back then. Thanks for nothing. Those complaining *now* were the cause of this back in the 1990′s.

ajacksonian seems to be on the right path. This theater seemed in much better shape when it was a Joint Special Operations effort, not a NATO effort. When my son was there in 2006 as an SF Team Leader he “owned” the territory. He had conventional support, but he did not need their approval to run an operations. Today he is back in the same Provence and SF needs the resident conventional unit’s approval to do most anything. It appears the conventional Army is pretty much road bound in uparmored A/C’d vehicles or FOB bound. When the JSOTF “owned” the battlespace there was a lot of ugly mountain humping along the border to inderdict the bad guys that now have much freer access. I believe part of the problem is NATO Command is not good at Special Ops. Thus we shifted emphasis to the conventional side when AF became a NATO operation. We need to reevaluate that formula. It is not about more troops, it is how they are used. The Surge in OIF was not, at its core, about more troops, it was about how the troops were used.

Fronlines assesment of the af/pak war would concern me more except fronline was pretty sure Iraq was hopless and that we would lose there. as far as I can tell they were wrong on Iraq and I hold out hope that they are wrong about this.

Jules, this is an interesting take, and the follow-on comments are interesting as well.

I have been following OEF for many months now, and the situation is indeed gloomy if one really watches the data and anecdotal reports. Highway 1 is a death trap, we are so undermanned that we are paying indigenous Afghans to protect supply and logistics chains (more than 500 of them have died trying), we only have the forces necessary to rid the urban centers of Taliban and are thus playing “whack-a-mole” counterinsurgency, and both the last OEF head (McNeill) and the current one (McKiernan) have said that it’s an under-resourced campaign. You can refuse to believe me, but let’s give the generals their due. Listen to them.

Sure, mountains make it different, but every COIN operation will have its quirks. That’s not the point. And to the comments that claim that it’s impossible to win, remember that thus far we have had only 30,000 or so troops in theater (along with some NATO troops with very anemic ROE). We still haven’t seen OEF on the steroids of 150,000 troops (what OIF had). We seem to be making claims about what is and isn’t possible in OEF without every having really tried yet.

Currently the campaign is being treated as a SOF campaign against high value targets, not a COIN campaign. That is, it is a counterterrorism operation, not a COIN campaign. SOF is great, but if we want to win, we are going to have to deploy infantry in numbers we did for Operation Iraqi Freedom. Less than this and we may as well come home. End it now and avoid the bloodshed.

As for simply leaving SOF in place to fight, this will work until the last logistics supply line is cut into by the Taliban and the SOF will no longer be able to get supplies and ordnance:

Finally, Pakistan is in deep trouble. They are having to beg the IMF for monetary help just to keep from going bankrupt for the next couple of months, their parliament has recently told the President to back off from military operations in FATA and the NWFP, thousands of Taliban are flooding into Karachi (the only port through which NATO supplies come) and Lahore, and they are targeting supply lines further South:

Sorry Jules, but things look like they are a problem because they are.

Now. I acknowledge that we should be willing to accept something less than perfection (e.g., Islamist rule is acceptable if and only if it doesn’t become a safe haven for globalists), but at the moment, I see no real break of the Taliban with AQ. In fact, the Tehrik-i-Taliban are even more closely tied to AQ than allied groups were six years ago. Things are going in the wrong direction, not the right.

Solutions? That’s sticky. COIN tactics, security for the population, larger force size and force projection (Marines take over operations in Helmand and perhaps other Provinces towards the East), increased financial assistance, continued work with the Afghan police and military, etc.

But this is going to be a slow process. At the battle of Wanat, nine U.S. soldiers died and fifteen were wounded, while NONE of the casualties were Afghan. That says something about the degree of reliance we can place on them at the moment.

Without forces, no plan will work. The precondition to winning is security for the population. If we have learned nothing from OIF, we have learned this.

Afghanistan is merely how the Dems propose to get out of the war on terror without seeming to get out. The road to defeat leads out of Iraq and through Afghanistan to everybody back home and ready to do the real Army work of filling sandbags and distributing MREs.

Where or who in history has ever been able to conqueor and hold these lands along the Silk Road? Not even the native tribesman of Afgahistan can hold Afgahistan together as a country. What is the strategic value of the place other than it is a tribal nation between other tribal nations, landlocked. Its major natural resource is opium. Under whose greater graces has that crop been allowed to florish, the Russian mafia, the French connection,Iran, clandestine spooks, EU addicts? If the subject of narco-politics is not on the table then securing the “Stans” is a perpetual no-win situation.

The above statement is not the rant of some Left wing nut but from a right wing independent, and a military intelligence Officer (oxymoron) for 18 years.

The biggest problem in Afghanistan is that the whole economy is based on the cultivation of the opium poppy.
The other factor is there is a total lack of a coherent government. What passes for government in Afghanistan is a collection of war lords that some times work together but most often work against every one else.

These war lords are financed by the sale of opium from the poppies that are grown in the areas they control.

The more we get involved in Afghanistan the more we are forced by our European allies have to shut down the cultivation of the opium poppy. The more fields we destroy the more we P.O. the local war lord becomes. If we attempt to buy the opium product the war lord plants 10 times more acrage. (It called a market economy. The bigger the market the more supply)

In fact there is so much money floating around in Afghanistan that Iran and Packistan are only to happy to supply weapons, and training to those who wish to eject the United States from Afghanistan.

Last but not least the taliban (or the local war lord who has a working agreement with the taliban) are now getting more sophisticated weapons to use against the NATO forces. The improved improvied explosive devices are now be supplanted by long range rockets, (30 kM), and we are starting to see sholder launched anti Aircraft missles and GLS guided war heads on the long range rockets.

I suspect that our death tolerance is about 4000 dead. As soon as we hit that magic number there will be a lot of pressure on the Obama administration to pull out of Afghanistan. Obama will cave because the people who will be putting pressure on him are the same ones that put him in the oval office in the first place.

It’s true that Afghanistan is not Iraq, and you can’t use the same tactics. But the strategies and principles should still apply. That’s why there is an unclassified version of Petraeus’s manual and a classified version that was used in Iraq. Applying the principles is hard, and telling the enemy what you mean to do will give them an advantage.

We’re dealing with a part of the world in which our assumptions about nation-states simply don’t apply. Europe walks in the footprints of Charlemagne and Cesare Borgia; little of Pakistan and less of Afghanistan would recognize that world.

I am much more optimistic than the program, Jim D, or Herschel Smith of Captains Journal. I may be wrong but I see the current deterioration in the situation of Afghanistan as minor problem that probably doesn’t get to much worse to fast. Maybe I am guilty of underestimating our enemy, but the fact is that I just don’t think to highly of the Taliban and Al Qaeda at this point. They make as many mistakes as they do achievements. What the mujahdeen did to Russia was impressive, what the Taliban is doing to Nato is not and I don’t forsee things getting drastically worse any time soon.

With a victory in Iraq, our ability to repair the breaches in Afghanistan grows significantly.

While Pakistan is in chaos, I am not so sure the situation is a tail wind for jihad. If the majority of the people of Pakistan turn on the bumbling jihadists than the Taliban and Al Qaeda are going to be in a world of hurt and that is the way I see the winds shifting in time.

Our enemies are prone to making a lot of mistakes and they just can’t afford to do that because they are so outgunned.

What I find most amazing is that none of evaluations of the Afghanistan campaign ever mention the logistics. The saying is, “captains study tactics; Generals study logistics.”

Yeah, we could increase our troop numbers in Afghanistan. But with more troops come the need for increased supplies. It has seemed to escape the notice of many people, but Afghanistan is landlocked. It has exactly zero seaports. Also ignored, sea transport is the only effective way to transport the amount of supplies required by U.S. troops. They are not VC guerillas sqautting in the bush with a bag of rice balls and Ncuc Mam. They are pretty high maintenance.

Right now we are supplied via Pakistani ports and a never ending string of trucks stretching through Pakistan to our bases in Afghanistan. How much more can be pushed up that string? And I’m sure everyone here knows that airlift is not a realistic alternative.

How many more troops can we realisticly supply? I suppose that would include supplies for our NATO allies.

Pakistan might not be the most reliable ally, but they’re the only ones that can offer us a supply route.

ajacksonian and John D did a better job of making the point I was trying to make. This is a light infantry fight (82nd, 101st, 10th Mt, Rangers, and leg Marines) with SF forces mixed in. We can argue about how to use those forces, but the 1st Armored Division isn’t going ride in on their tanks and Bradleys and start kicking ass.

When Obama talked about a surge in Afghanistan, I wonder who he was going to send, how they would get there, what they would do once in country, and how that would change the long-term situation. He didn’t supply any of these details.

Do you people that think Afghanistan is win-over-able have rocks in your heads??? You are fighting an ideology based in religeon and hundreds of years of tradition- but more importantly, we are OCCUPYING their land- if the Taliban were to occupy Indiana, would you be saying that they just need to sway the “hearts and minds” of the people by them giving us Humanitarian supplies or overwhelming them with a troop surge? The people of Indiana would never give up. Native people don’t give a sh*t about U.S./Nato hand outs, they just want us gone. Iraq is only somewhat “winnable” because it was a secular country under Hussein. I agree that we had to go after Bin Laden in Afghanistan, but we let him go, now he’s strong as ever (Bush blew it) and now we have a mess on our hands that is far more dangerous than Iraq ever was. All you people with your couch side war strategies and games need to do read history. The West can’t occupy Islamic countries- it’s a culture clash that will go on for centuries. How can you ask a man to be the last one to die for “victory”? Find a way to protect Pakistan’s nukes- either militarily or diplomatically or both- and then get the hell out. Keep some intelligencia there to keep an eye on Bin Laden and take him out Moussad style but beyond that that’s all we should do. Had we had proper Airport Security to begin with, 9-11 might not have happened. Terrorism is a security problem, nothing more.

Afganistan is win-able only with an exit plan. It is strategic in that it borders the lawless states of Pakistan where jihadism, opium trafficing, and uncontrolled but terifying tribes thrive. Afganistan was/is the training ground for the Taliban and AQ. Osama’s three pillars remain: drive out the infidel, purify the brotheren, and expand.
Opium is not a food supplement, and terrorism is more than a “security problem,” especially with WMD. The crusades have not been forgiven.
Afganistan gives Pakistan a chance to put their act together, and borders Iran to the North. The Silk Road was since Alexander, a vital cross road. It is the Europe to India connection. Russia wanted it.

“now he’s strong as ever (Bush blew it) and now we have a mess on our hands that is far more dangerous than Iraq ever was.”

Umm NO! I strongly disagree.

In reality Iraq was a fairly low intensity conflict with most of the major factors for progress in our favor. Afghanistan is also a fairly low intensity conflict, but there are less major factors for progress in our favor. Still all the Taliban can do is a little sniping here and a little sniping there. Just like for the insurgency in Iraq the intensity of the conflict for the Taliban is rather high. Militarily they are under a great deal of pressure and their leadership is under constant threat of death or capture.

Some commenters assume the Afghan people aren’t really on our side. That may be partly true, but those same people are not necessarily on the Taliban’s side. All we have to do is have the people hate the Taliban more than us and the Taliban will continue to be in a poor position.

As for Al Qaeda, they are being embarressed and humiliated in Iraq, and are being confronted and contested vigorously everywhere else. Al Qaeda was in it’s best position prior to 9/11 until Afghanistan fell. Now that they are forced to fight for their lives, honor, and all Muslim lands they are streched pretty thin.

“Iraq was a fairly low intensity conflict with most of the major factors for progress in our favor.” from “What?:” Tell that to the soldiers’ families who have lost lives, limbs, and will suffer the rest of their lives from other traumas. And YES it is far more dangerous than Iraq because of Pakistan’s nukes.